Twayne wrote:
Web Kracked wrote:
...
Colleges require Word/office when the students need only a
word processor to do the work. That is the real joke.
Yeah, actually, you're right. With me, it's the stranglehold Microsoft
tries to place on its users that puts me off. When you use their
applications, you're just plain old stuck if/when they decide to
obsolete it on you, and now their latest versions of Office don't play
nicely with older versions of Office. To me that's totally
unacceptable, regardless of the fact there are workarounds. MS has also
stranded and forced upgrades on millions of developers using their
development applications too. They are a single-source, pretty much a
monopoly once you are invested in their products. With the days of open
source and the likes of OOo, those days be be put behind us. Now, if a
program should go belly up, there are other resources to replace it,
unlike MS, plus the information is public, sitting there waiting for
someone else to come along and pick it up is need be.
With one minor issue left, I have now successfully weaned myself of
Microsoft Office. Everything else I need/have is either open source or
reasonably priced, and there are alternatives available should I need
them. I'm no longer locked into Office like Microsoft did to me.
Literally, the only strong tie I still have to Microsoft is the
operating system. I'm running windows XP Pro and see no reason to even
consider upgrading it, ever, to Vista or win7 or whatever because XP has
several years of life left yet, is very stable now, and by the time they
can force the issue and think they'll force me to upgrade to a new
version, I'll have learned Linux well enough to just give them the
finger.
I could actually do that today, but not without some growing pains
and the loss of a couple pieces of equipment for which there aren't
functional drivers yet. Either those drivers will eventually appear or
the equipment will die and I'll replace it with something that does have
drivers; but I am no longer worried about being captive to Microsoft.
As soon as it's a reasonable switch, I have drivers for everything, and
can confidently choose a flavor of Linux, I'll no longer have dual boot
setup. Won't need it because I'll just remove that last piece of
improsinment software called XP, good as it is finally, in favor of
Linux.
Well, enough of that.
As I said, OOo makes labels easy. Then Avery makes templates
for all their labels that I have ever used or seen. So either
way, OOo can do the work easier, for me, than Word ever did.
Yeah, depending on what you need to do, OO.o is a very, very capable
application suite. It still has a few quirks and bugs with only one
exception, I have work-arounds for all the ones I've come up against.
Ones I haven't come up against I don't care much about; yet<g>. But I
am proud of the fact that the only remaining vestage of Microsoft left
on my machine right now is the OS. Oops: I Lied! I still have VB6
loaded, but haven't needed it in a couple years so I'd probably never
miss it if I took it off. Everything I developed with it has been
replaced using other languages.
<snip>
Regards,
Twayne
Thanks Twayne. You state the only real need to deal with
Microsoft, the O.S.. I still have to use some paid software
since I have not found free and easy to use replacements.
Hopefully some great people will create those replacement
programs. Also Linux is a problem with keeping up with
drivers. The new equipment makers do not make Linux drivers.
We all have to wait for someone to create it for their own
use. Printers, Scanners, Camera stuff, network equipment
like wireless and wired.
I have problems with Vista but have to have it for the drivers
for the stuff I have to deal with. It cannot even run the
video processing software properly, so I have to keep XP or
Win2000 around to do it. MS really messed with all of us
as the computer industry grew. But thank God that some
great people took a simple UNIX clone (from a guy who could
not afford it for his systems) and made it a full fledged
operating system. From there the movement for free software
that does the same thing as the big boy's paid products.
Then OpenOffice.org got started. We all rely on those great
guys and gals who can do the type of programming needed
to make all these open source products we all are falling for
and loving.
Watch out big boys, the good guys and gals are catching up to
you. Unpaid people are making products that you are paying
big bucks for your programming.
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.11.13/2001 - Release Date: 03/14/09
06:54:00
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.org
